So I See... Konting Pananaw... LITO BANAYO

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

In the middle of March, 2006, accompanied by a daughter and my then year-old grandson, I flew to the US of A to visit my family. Two of my kids (whose mom is an American citizen by choice) were studying in the West Coast at the time. I had planned on spending three weeks there, planning to drive to my favourite haunts in Carmel and Monterey with the kids, also to Napa, Sonoma and the rest of California wine country. Three weeks of pure relaxation.

I met up with a close friend who had transferred to San Francisco since a year back, and while we were having lunch in a very good Vietnamese restaurant somewhere near the Golden Gate Park, he called up Cezar Mancao, whom we call “Boy”. Cezar and this friend were together in Mindanao during the 2001 senatorial campaign of Panfilo Lacson, the PNP chief who decided in the first week of February, just days before the deadline, that he would run to become a member of the Senate.

Boy asked me to come to Florida. “Pasyalan mo naman kami dito, Sir, makita mo naman ang southern Florida”, said Mancao. The last time I was in Miami and went diving in the Keys was in 1982. Sometime in 1988, with my kids still in grade school and one a toddler even, the whole family flew from Virginia to Orlando, visiting Disneyland and the Epcot Center. It’s been a long time indeed, and in the cold, rainy spring of 2006, a visit to sunny, tropical Florida would be a nice respite.

We took a midnight flight from San Francisco and arrived at Fort Lauderdale at about seven in the morning, Eastern time. Mancao welcomed us, and immediately drove us to the Grand Palms Golf Club and Spa in Pembroke Pines where I was to stay. After leaving our bags, we then went to his house somewhere in Broward County, just about a five-minute drive away. He lived in an exclusive, gated village, and his house, a six-room affair, was nice, with a small swimming pool at the backyard to boot. Apart from his van, there were two other cars in the garage.

His kids and a brother-in-law were around, while wife Maricar, a medical doctor, was on duty at a nearby hospital. As I was staying just for two days, Boy immediately brought us to Miami, some forty minutes or so away. I noticed how much Miami had changed, with so many towering apartment-hotels facing the bay that arched around South Beach. We soaked in the sights and sounds of the place, transferring from one art deco bar to another well into the morning of the following day. Boy Mancao was the perfect host. On the way back, we even had a police escort from Miami to Pembroke Pines. The police escort turned out to be a West Miami police officer from Asingan in Pangasinan, a kabaleyan and former aide of FVR himself who even brought us cups of strong Cuban coffee. Wow! Pinasiklaban pa ako ni Boy Mancao ng police escort complete with wang-wang.

That morning, when he fetched me at the golf club, and over a cup of morning coffee, I asked Mancao in the presence of our common friend about the Dacer-Corbito double murder. (In the campaign of 2001, when Lacson was running for senator, the vehicle of Dacer was found in a ravine somewhere in Indang, Cavite. This was followed by severe propaganda against my candidate, complete with Senate committee hearings called by Joker Arroyo, if memory serves me right. I watched helplessly by as the survey ratings of Ping fell. In the early innings, he was in the top six, and I thought that with his brilliant feats as PNP Chief, where he turned around the negative image of the police institution, that campaign would be a cinch. But with the incessant barrage of negative propaganda fuelled by money from Malacanang and directed by a cabal of Gloria and Mike loyalists, his ratings slipped fast.)

“E sino?”, I pressed. Boy this time could not answer. No longer did he look me straight in the eye. He was pensive, looked down at the table, and mumbled, “Ewan, sir. Mahirap namang mag-speculate…”

I looked at our friend, whose facial expression told me I should press no further. He changed the subject matter, and we talked about business opportunities in the Florida area. Mancao had been an instant success as real estate businessman. He struck “gold” when in the wake of a a strong hurricane that hit the Gulf, several houses were levelled out. Then a real estate broker, Cezar suddenly saw his business boom. With quick wits, engaging salesmanship and lots of daring, he bought a lot of real estate, repaired and refurbished these, and re-sold at higher prices. He parlayed one successful deal after another. He was active in Fil-Am community affairs, and even wanted me to have dinner with a state congressman whom he had become chummy with. Boy Mancao had hit the big-time, by Fil-Am standards.

As I was rushing back to California the following day, we capped my visit with a relaxed lunch at a veranda fronting the long beach of Fort Lauderdale, a favourite retirement haven, the marina of which was packed full of plush and swanky yachts. Cezar’s wife Maricar and his kids joined us, and together, they brought me back to the airport for an afternoon flight. I arrived home late into the night, when I received a text message from our paper’s Che Francisco about my article. I could only rush an article about my Florida sojourn about midnight, Pacific time. I e-mailed it without a title, such that boss Pocholo Romualdez simply entitled the piece, “Peripatetic writer”, probably because it read like a travelogue.

But since 2007, when the property market soured, Mancao’s fortunes also fell into bad times. And it became worse in 2008. Sometime last year, he himself called me, and with sad voice, said he was into financial difficulties. Meanwhile, Michael Ray Aquino was imprisoned due to alleged collusion with Leandro Aragoncillo’s admitted spying into US government files regarding his motherland, the Philippines. Finally, along with Glenn Dumlao whom I have not had the privilege of personally knowing, an extradition request was filed by the Philippine government for the three, all on account of the Dacer-Corbito murder trial.

Mancao and Dumlao went into solitary confinement, leg-irons and all. It must have been an excruciating ordeal, and I feel bad for them, especially my friend Boy Mancao. His cousins are even our neighbours in Butuan.

Dumlao has spoken his heart out, and it was shown on television. Senator Lacson excerpted some of his statements in his second privilege speech on Erap and his son Jinggoy.

Mancao has testified in court, and is now under cross-examination. One of his lawyers, as irrepressible but much more irresponsible than former DOJ Secretary Raul Gonzalez, yaks in and out of the courtroom peddling his own scenarios and conjured scripts. I have had my own experiences with this lawyer and one of his hapless clients who should have known better than hire a braggadocio with more air than brains in his cranium.

Aquino is still in a jail in New York (or New Jersey), freed from doing time for the Aragoncillo spy case, but now contesting the extradition request of the Philippine government in connection with the Dacer-Corbito murders.

I feel sympathy for both Ping Lacson, whose career and reputation have been tarnished by the twists and turns of the government’s persecutory handling of the case, instead of assiduously ferreting out the truth, so that justice may finally be done to the Dacer and Corbito families.

I also feel sympathy for President Estrada, who now finds himself stewing in the revelations of Dumlao and Mancao, and the speeches of Lacson.

But, as lawyers have been taught in law school, “fiat justitiae, ruat coeli”. Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.

Though the heavens fall.

This government’s Sandiganbayan convicted Joseph Ejercito Estrada for the crime of plunder. This same government pardoned him immediately thereafter, rendering nugatory all the volumes of evidence, documentary and testimonial, that the celebrated trial adduced. Ibaon na lang sa limot, in the hope perhaps that all the political turbulence (with lives lost in Edsa Tres) that convulsed this benighted land for years and years on end, would likewise disappear with political forgiveness.

But bad governance on the part of this regime has covered up for Joseph Ejercito Estrada’s own record of poor governance. Governance that was alright in the full light of day, but became bad in the darkness of night and the wee hours of each morning. Many of us in that government came in with bright hopes, with political capital unmatched since the days of Cory, and ended up disillusioned at the waste of so much goodwill, simply because a weak president could not transcend the habits built through a lifetime of irresponsible hedonism. We agonized through those last days, searching our own souls for our own “reason to believe” any further, any more. Ask Mar Roxas, a decent man who along with many, many more decent persons, served under the Estrada presidency.

Did Joseph Ejercito Estrada order the summary killings of Salvador Dacer and Emmanuel Corbito? And if so, what could have been the motive? Was it “blackmailing him on the BW stock mess”, where he and his friend Dante Tan were accused of insider trading, as Glenn Dumlao stated before a television camera? Was it because Bubby Dacer was found purloining sensitive information from his client Estrada and sharing the same with his friends, FVR and his Joe Almonte? Whatever for? Assuming that indeed, as Dumlao now confesses, the crime was masterminded in the bowels of Malacanang. And assuming further, that Boy Mancao is telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.

Because he applied for presidential pardon from a leader whose own record of governance pales in comparison to all predecessors, bar none, and got it, Joseph Ejercito Estrada, sans remorse and sans admission, now wants to inflict his self-proclaimed “visions for the poor” upon the benighted land once more.

Lito Banayo

Lito Banayo’s involvement in Philippine politics began with a chance encounter with the late Benigno Aquino, Jr. in the spring of 1981, at the Washington Hotel in Washington D.C. Ninoy Aquino was then on exile, after having undergone heart bypass surgery. That started a series of week-end visits to Ninoy’s home in Boston.

In the fall of 1982, Lito decided to come home to the Philippines after two-year stay in the United States, and as he bade goodbye to Ninoy, he was asked to help the then fledging political opposition in the country.

Lito Banayo asked Ninoy who he would report to, and was told to see Doy Laurel. Banayo was quizzical, for the Laurels had been Marcos’ political padrinos in the past. Ninoy told him however that Doy Laurel and he grew up together and were almost like brothers. Thus did Lito Banayo enter the world of a political technician, his description for the kind of work he has been doing since.

He helped Doy Laurel and Eva Estrada Kalaw organized the United Nationalist Democratic Organization (UNIDO) which became the major coalition against the Marcos regime. At a time when media was controlled and Marcos’ monolithic political party, the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL) was all over, UNIDO put up a difficult but nonetheless successful struggle.

In the 1984 Batasang Pambansan elections, the UNIDO coalition won 60 of 180 seats, with an overwhelming majority in Metro Manila and key capital cities. Lito Banayo was deputy spokesperson and deputy campaign manager of that national campaign, working under Ernesto Maceda, who later became Senate President, and Alfonso Policarpio, Ninoy’s publicist.

When Ninoy Aquino returned to the Philippines after years of exile, it was Lito Banayo who, along with Erik Espina, coined the welcome slogan “Ninoy, Hindi Ka Nag-iisa,” a welcome greeting that eventually became a political battlecry after the latter was assassinated at the tarmac of the international airport.

When Cory Aquino, Ninoy’s widow, and Doy Laurel, his childhood friend, later challenged Ferdinand Marcos in the historic “snap” elections of February 1986, Lito was one of the major campaign technicians in an effort that drew many volunteers from all walks of life.

He was appointed Postmaster-General after the Edsa uprising that resulted in the downfall of Marcos and the ascent of Aquino. At the postal office, he initiated major systemic reforms, and initiated its transformation from a budget-dependent office under the transport and communications department into an autonomous government corporation now called Philippine Postal Corporation.

He has become political consultant to various names in Philippine politics – Senator Orlando Mercado, Senate President Marcelo B. Fernan, and now Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson. He was consultant too of Speaker Ramon Mitra, Jr., Ronaldo Zamora, Manuel A. Roxas III and Hernando B. Perez, all congressmen at the time.

In 1992, he was campaign spokesman of the Mitra-Fernan presidential tandem. In 1995, he handled the campaign of Senator, later Senate President Marcelo B. Fernan. In 1998, he was in the campaign team that helped Joseph Ejercito Estrada become president of the land. His erstwhile principal, Mercado, was named campaign manager. During the term of President Estrada, he was Secretary-General of Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino, the political party of the then President.

He served as General Manager of the Philippine Tourism Authority from June 30, 1998 to November 3, 2000. He was also concurrently appointed as Presidential Adviser for Political Affairs with cabinet rank, by President Joseph Estrada. Although he resigned from the Estrada cabinet earlier, he was with the deposed president until his last hours in Malacanang.

In 2001, he was campaign manager for then retired PNP director-general Ping Lacson’s difficult but highly successful run for the Philippine Senate. He also helped Ping Lacson as a contender for the presidency in 2004, as well as Manila Mayor Lito Atienza in administrative matters at City Hall during his term.

Lito Banayo finished Economics at Letran College, then undertook graduate studies at the Ateneo Business School, as well as the University of the Philippines College of Public Administration.

He is native of San Pablo City, Laguna, and Malolos, Bulacan, but his family has moved to Butuan City in Agusan del Norte since the early sixties, although he himself has lived in Manila throughout most of his life. He is married and is blessed with three children.